While both estimates are predicated on differing economic assumptions (such as predicted increases in inflation and gross domestic product), both assume that total on-budget spending will continue to rise according to current statutory spending caps through 2002, and at the rate of inflation thereafter. It is interesting to note that the CBO has recently completed a study which suggests that they have posted a better economic forecasting record than the OMB. Review this study at http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=2241&sequence=5.

Instead of trying to decide who has the right numbers, why not
just keep in mind the number that nobody talks about, because
they can't spin it the way they want to: total debt.

Now, I may be a bit simpleminded; I don't have an accounting
education, and my name's not Arthur Andersen. But when I look at
the amount of money I owe now, and compare it to what I owed a year
ago, I won't say I've run a surplus if I owe more now, and I won't say
I've run a deficit if I owe less.

According to the Treasury Department, the total debt of the
government of the United States in 1985 was 1.817 trillion dollars;
the number for 2001 was 5.770 trillion. Every single year during
that range, the debt increased. What does that mean?
NO SURPLUSES.

But don't bother asking your Congressman, Senator or President
about that. They'll tell you about how the government has been in
surplus since 1998. They'll wave their hands in the air and mumble
on-budget. If you're looking particularly gullible, and you have something
to bribe them with, like a million potential voters from your
labor union or other organization, they might even wander off-budget
and tell you that there's been a surplus every year since
1985, and in fact it grew from 9.4 billion dollars then to 346.8 billion in
1998! (Why that would be considered a good thing is beyond me.)

Don't let their chicanery distract you from the real issue: the government
is in debt up to their (our) eyeballs, and a goodly amount more than that,
and more so with every passing year.

When will people realize that government can't be trusted with their money
in the first place? Demopublican, Republicrat, it makes no difference.

You can see the numbers at
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opddload.htm

Looking back, it is laughable to imagine that there ever was this whole notion that there was going to be a perpetual surplus, that the question of the hour was whether to "rein it in" by only half a trillion dollars, or by a trillion and a half.

This presents a perpetual psychological problem. The nation, like a household, racks up debts, and when it comes into a bit of money, such that its income for a month exceeds its expenses for that month, it acts, its people act, as if this signals a permanent guarantee of future excess income. And so, plans are immediately made to spend all this excess income, in perpetuity (forget paying off any existing underlying debt). And, naturally, everybody in the household gets in on the spending-the-excess act, without paying much attention to what the others are doing along the same lines, so that the same excess is spent many times over by many different members of the household.

The moral of this story, really, is that there simply is no such thing as a "surplus" so long as there is a debt. There is only the danger of the rhetoric of mislabeling something as such.